Tech

Not a bird or a plane — nope, it’s a new limited-time NFT-based movie marketing stunt from Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. As physical disc sales have waned, Warner Bros. is trying to establish a new home-entertainment business model based on nonfungible tokens (NFTs), which verify ownership and authenticity of digital content. Customers can buy, sell

N’Jeri Eaton, former head of audio at Netflix and head of content at Apple Podcasts, is joining Wondery as head of co-productions for limited series. Eaton reports to George Lavender, head of creative production for limited series at Wondery. Eaton will oversee the podcast studio and network’s external collaborations, managing multiple shows from their initial

Spotify is undertaking a “strategic realignment” of its podcast division, laying off about 200 staffers. Sahar Elhabashi, Spotify’s VP, head of podcast business, announced the job cuts in a memo to employees Monday that was shared publicly. The 200 employees represents about 2% of the audio streamer’s worldwide workforce. The layoffs in the podcast group

On Dec. 9, 2020, YouTube enacted a ban on videos that falsely claimed then-President Trump won the U.S. presidential election. Since then, according to the platform, it has removed “tens of thousands” of videos that violated the policy. As of June 2, 2023, YouTube has reversed that decision: The video giant announced that it “will

Ella Irwin, after less than seven months as head of trust and safety at Elon Musk’s Twitter, has resigned from the company. Irwin confirmed to Reuters that she resigned but did not provide a reason for her exit. Earlier, Fortune reported that Irwin’s Slack account at Twitter appeared to have been deactivated. Neither Irwin nor

Vimeo is ending support for its existing TV apps — with the video management and hosting provider telling customers they’ll have a “better ongoing experience” by using video-casting features instead. The company is ceasing support for Apple TV, Android TV, Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick, and Roku as of June 27, 2023. “That

Chris Shiflett, longtime axeman of the Foo Fighters, is launching a podcast about all things guitar. “My new show, ‘Shred With Shifty,’ was born out of the fact that I spend an awful lot of time watching people on the internet explain guitar parts almost right, so I thought, what if I could just go

For the first time, rival streaming services Netflix and Paramount+ are coming together in a price-discounted bundle, exclusively for Verizon wireless customers in the U.S. The limited-time deal, through Verizon’s +play subscription-aggregation hub, offers the carrier’s mobile customers a price point of $25.99/month for Netflix Premium and Paramount+ With Showtime — a 19% discount ($5.99

Maybe Elon Musk’s Twitter isn’t the free-for-all “free speech” zone that some right-wingers have been led to believe. Twitter nixed a deal with Daily Wire to premiere the conservative website’s “What Is a Woman?” documentary for free on the platform because of two instances of “misgendering” in the film, according to CEO Jeremy Boreing. Not

Meta — still trying to make the metaverse happen — unveiled its next-generation VR and mixed-reality headset, the Meta Quest 3, which will ship this fall for a price point starting at $500. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg announced the Quest 3 in an Instagram post Thursday. The headset is “the first mainstream headset with high-res

Pluto TV is reprising its summer movie event with a rotating batch of more than 200 films coming to the streaming service — all for the low price of free. The titles include installments of fan-favorite franchises ahead of their upcoming new releases in theaters this summer, including the first four movies in the Indiana

Cannes Festival’s digital media partner Brut. and leading podcast studio Paradiso Media are launching “Brutally Informed,” a weekly podcast series that just launched exclusively on Audible. The program is part of Audible’s expanding news and non-fiction slate. Hosted by journalists Jared Marcelle, Rheya Spigner, and Noah Jones, “Brutally Informed” aims at delivering insights on issues spanning current

Bobby Kotick has a secret: He was ready to buy Time Warner a few years ago. The CEO of Activision Blizzard drops this nugget early on while sitting at the company’s Santa Monica headquarters for his first extensive interview since 2012. It’s a Friday afternoon in mid-April, which means the office is mostly deserted. Huge

Responding to an increasingly global demand for Japanese pop culture, the Kodansha comic book publishing firm is to debut a web version of K Manga, its recently-launched U.S. serialization app. The storied firm will mark the launch of the ‘browser version’ of K Manga with a June 22 online party that is held in Japan,

Lucy Liu will executive produce and provide the voice of legendary pirate Cheng Shih in a new immersive virtual-reality experience, “The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend.” From London-based Singer Studios, “The Pirate Queen” tells the story of the woman in 19th century China who became one of the most powerful pirates in history. When the

Alexa will soon no longer be able to swear a blue streak for you in the voice of Samuel L. Jackson. Amazon has discontinued sales of the special Alexa celebrity-voice add-on packs from Jackson, Melissa McCarthy and Shaquille O’Neal, which have been able to tell jokes, report on the weather and deliver other responses to

Audible announced a new multiproject, exclusive deal with Ashé Audio Ventures, the newly formed podcast label co-founded by Viola Davis. Audible will be the exclusive home for the scripted and unscripted audio originals from Ashé Audio, formed by Davis and Julius Tennon’s JuVee Productions and Maurício Mota and Katie Mota’s Wise Entertainment. The slate will

This week, HBO Max faded to black — and was reborn as Max. But many people are still wondering: Why did Warner Bros. Discovery decide to change the name? HBO, after all, remains a solid-gold brand representing premium-quality original TV shows, going back decades, from “The Sopranos” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” to “Game of Thrones”

Prime Video has announced that “Citadel: Diana” will be the title of the next chapter of the “Citadel” Spyverse franchise and released a first look image of rising Italian star Matilda De Angelis who is its central character. De Angelis made her international breakthrough in Susanne Bier’s “The Undoing,” alongside Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. 

“Euphoria” actor Jacob Elordi and Zachary Quinto star in “He Went That Way,” a film based on the wacky true story of a celebrity animal trainer (Quinto) and his TV chimp Spanky, who spent three days with a serial killer (Elordi) in 1964. While some press reports have described the film as a queer project,

The four-season run of “Succession,” HBO’s highbrow family corporate drama, is coming to its conclusion — with the show giving viewers no clear tea leaves on what the future holds for Waystar Royco or the media conglomerate’s internecine clan. Will one of the Roy progeny ultimately take the throne as the new CEO, fulfilling the

Podcast network Audio Up and graphic novel publisher and merchandiser Z2 are partnering to produce the fictional “Neon Empire.” Described as “one part ‘8 Mile’ with a dash of ‘Once Upon a Time in America,’ the story is a dark send-up of Nashville’s music business featuring original music from top country artists. Based on a

Semafor, the digital new startup launched last fall, announced that it has raised $19 million in a new financing round, bringing its total raised to $34 million. The New York-based company was co-founded by Ben Smith, previously media columnist for the New York Times and editor in chief of BuzzFeed News, and Justin B. Smith,

The Academy Museum’s podcast will launch its Season 2 with the series “Close Up on Casting” bowing on June 15. In the course of 10 episodes, “Close Up on Casting,” produced in partnership with LAist, will try to answer the Academy’s question: “Who gets the part?” The episode topics will include “The Casting of ‘Rebecca:’

Live sports streaming service DAZN and social analytics firm Videocites have forged a partnership to fight rampant sports content piracy in the social media sphere. Dubbed “The Netflix of Sports,” DAZN is a leading premium live sports platform with a footprint comprising Italy, Spain, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, Japan, Canada, U.S. and the U.K. The company boasts that Videocities’

Jeffrey Katzenberg took a massive swing at the streaming biz with Quibi — and despite the startup’s shutdown just six months after it launched, he says he’s still proud of the effort. Katzenberg, an investor, Hollywood producer and former top studio chief, founded Quibi with former eBay and Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman. The

Zooey Deschanel loves to cook. Her specialties include risotto and various French dishes she learned from visiting family overseas. Even so, her new Max food series, “What Am I Eating?,” is not about her life in the kitchen. “I didn’t want to do a show where it’s like, ‘I’m an actor – watch me cook!’”

With cord-cutting at an all-time high, Comcast is introducing a new streaming subscription option to keep broadband customers in the video fold. On Tuesday, Comcast announced Now TV, a new streaming offering that includes more than 40 live cable entertainment channels from A+E Networks, AMC Networks, Hallmark and Warner Bros. Discovery — but no local

SAG-AFTRA has struck a deal with celebrity video platform Cameo to cover the brand deals that members make through Cameo for Business (C4B) under a guild contract. The new pact, “C4B x SAG-AFTRA Agreement,” will allow SAG-AFTRA members to count C4B earnings toward health and pension benefits, just as those earnings become a growing concern

UPDATED: It’s the big launch day for Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max — and the newly revamped streaming service encountered some technical problems right off the bat. The company said the issues have been “minor” and were swiftly fixed. On Tuesday morning, subscribers took to social media to complain that they were having problems logging in